Monday, June 9, 2014

Head Above Water



Just trying to keep my head above water here at the farm with about eight hours left to go in Free Water Day.  Having a lot of fun with all the water and I hope you all are too.  Just had a few random thoughts to share in follow up to my previous post, Free Water Day Redux.


SPRINKLERS
I seriously underestimated how useful sprinklers would be.  I had a few out when they were first introduced, but people kept clicking on them.  It irked me so much that I stored them away and never pulled them out again.  Even when the "sprinkler trick" was en vogue I stubbornly refused to pull them out.

But all this back and forth running from my crops to my water tower during Free Water Day just pushed me over the edge.  So I pulled out the dusty old sprinklers and wow, what an idiot I feel like now for not doing so sooner.

These things can not only water nine crops or four fields at a time without your avatar having to move a muscle, it will even allow you to harvest your water tower from wherever you're standing!

This is my new favorite pop-up screen in the game:


These sprinklers have been a godsend for my Free Water Day experience.  Really makes it so fast and easy to water everything.


PLOTS
I think maxing out my plots was not the smartest idea.  There are just too many, and it makes things a bit difficult to manage.  Plus I don't have enough sprinklers to cover them all.

Here's a snapshot of my farm at the moment:


The unsprinklered plots are just taking up space, as I'm not even using them.  I'm afraid to delete them just yet though because I haven't finished processing my overnight visitors and some of them may have expended visit energies on plots that would otherwise be wasted if I were to delete them in the interim.  Curse my miserly ways!


FERTILIZER
My Arabian Horse Brigade out front has been performing spectacularly, keeping my fertilizer coffers overflowing.  I can't thank my visiting neighbors enough either for keeping them well fed for me.  I truly have the best bunch of neighbors ever.  

It's amazing how fast you can run out of fertilizer on Free Water Day.  Going in, you have this naive notion that 100 fertilizer is going to last awhile, but then you're shocked to find that its gone in the blink of an eye.  

I decided to change up my strategy early on, fertilizing only the crops planted in fields and leaving the individual plots unfertilized.  So far, so good.

The fertilizer plane was a pretty good time saver as I suspected; not as good as the sprinklers, but decent.  However, my fuel supply did not last long, so I'm back to fertilizing manually now.  


BEE BOX
If your bee box is driving you insane, you can simply ignore it, or you can temporarily store it in your inventory during Free Water Day.  It's not like you're low on honey or anything, right?



 
NEW GRAPHICS
I made a new Happy Free Water Day graphic for my farm buddies who own New Hampshire chickens, like Holly and Skulletta.  



Feel free to grab a copy for yourself or share it around if you want.

I also made this handy, dandy Free Water Day Crafting cheat sheet which you may also feel free to download, use and share:



THE SINCEREST FORM OF FLATTERY
From the Zynga Player Forums... this looks... familiar.  Better poetry than mine though.   Kudos!  :)






5 comments:

  1. About 15 hours in, I started using about a third of my 108 plots on rye, barley, ginger and squash, and the rest on the 1-2 minute crops. That worked best for me.

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    1. That is really smart, anon! I wish that occurred to me. It's weird, it's like as soon as the free water started flowing I lost my mind and became a drooling idiot. Kept having to refer back to my own blog to figure out what to do next. Pathetic! Kudos to you and your winning strategy!

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  2. How much did you rake in Choo? Here's the corniest pic I got from FWD :D http://i.imgur.com/BJ1y422.png

    Going to try to hyperlink it:

    [URL]http://i.imgur.com/BJ1y422.png[/URL]

    GL

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    1. Oh boy, GL, I think I really performed pretty dismally. I guess I raked in about 1,000 of each of the 1-2 min crops, and about 5,000 radishes. That was the one shining moment, I finally achieved blue mastery in radishes. But I didn't make a dent in blackberries or any of the 1-2 hour crops. I feel like I left a lot on the table. I'll have to do a recap post and explore the reasons why I think I failed so miserably. That's a great pic, is that your farm? LOL @ "corniest." The Cornfish God would be pleased with this! BTW, thanks for linking to my blog at the Zynga Player Forums! You're the best!

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  3. Actually someone elses, but it almost crashed the game for me :D Lol, I'm glads the CFG would be pleased either way :) No problem, everyone in the forums loved it!
    GL

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